Keynote speaker: Roger Célestin, Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of Connecticut

From daily transportation to emotional exaltation, the notion of transport implicates both the most routine and the most extraordinary aspects of life. At any point on this spectrum, transport always involves a process: a process of shifting between places, modes, states, or representations. It can be a movement towards a time, a place, an idea, a climax. Transatlantic voyages permit immigration; literature circulates, leading to new interpretations, editions, and translations; images are projected through space and onto a screen… These movements raise questions of origin, destination and motivation; they also push us to examine questions of will and intent, as the idea of transport often implies passivity or loss of self: one may be transported by unexpected joy, swept away by nostalgia, or deported against one's desire. Far from its immediate quotidian connotations, transport thus also has rhetorical, esthetic and political implications. In the aim of investigating the questions raised by the various facets of transport, we invite submissions from a variety of fields including, but not limited to,s literary, cultural, and media studies, engaging with all periods and genres of cultural production anywhere in the French-speaking world.

Graduate students who wish to participate in the conference should submit an abstract, in French or English, of no more than 250 words. Abstracts must be sent, as attachments, to brown.equinoxes@gmail.com before 3 February, 2014. Emails should include the author's name, institutional affiliation, and contact information. Presentations, whether in English or French, should not exceed 20 minutes.